Title change:
WA landlords can ignore tenant unions, and Tacoma wants to change that

TACOMA — Below the warm glow of string lights in their century-old apartment building, Bearett Hoffmann and his neighbors overwhelmingly voted to do something that may sound terrifying to many renters: voluntarily stop paying their utility bills.

By standing together, the renters hope they can pressure their landlord to change the utility billing system they say has saddled them with unfairly high costs.

“This is the type of escalation that we need to do,” Hoffmann said, “because (the owners) have not been willing to negotiate with us on a regular basis so far.”

The group’s newly formed union is part of a growing movement in Tacoma that could soon have more power. A measure on the city’s November ballot could force landlords to negotiate with tenant unions like this one — the first law of its kind in the state.

A push for more renter power comes as tenants nationwide struggle to afford housing and other basic needs. Tacoma’s tenant organizing is part of a surge in renter activism over the past five years that has stretched well beyond coastal metros to Kansas City, Mo., and Louisville, Ky., said Peter Dreier, a politics professor at Occidental College who has written about housing and renter issues.

As home prices remain out of reach, fewer renters in their 20s and 30s see homeownership on the horizon, leaving them with a “sense of tenant consciousness,” Dreier said.

“Both low-income and middle-class tenants are feeling like their backs are to the wall,” Dreier said, “and that they need to protect themselves as renters because they may wind up being renters for a long time.”

Initiative Measure No. 1 on the Tacoma ballot this fall could give that organizing more leverage. Supported by progressive and socialist groups, the measure would require landlords to meet with tenant unions that are supported by renters in a majority of a building’s units. The measure would also bring a suite of other changes, meant to stiffen penalties for landlords who violate tenant safety and habitability laws. Landlord groups are pouring money into an opposition campaign.

Existing laws, such as Seattle’s, sometimes protect renters’ rights to organize but usually do not require landlords to negotiate with tenant groups. San Francisco in 2022 began requiring landlords to meet and confer with tenant unions, but Tacoma’s would be the first law of its kind in Washington.

Landlords argue the requirement opens property owners to potential lawsuits over technicalities, such as the mandate that landlords meet with tenant unions at least once per quarter for up to two hours.

Those types of rules are “not effective, and it’s not helpful,” said Jake Mayson, government affairs director for the Washington Multi-Family Housing Association, which represents landlords. “But what it does do is create paths and avenues for people to extract money with lawsuits.”

Property owners are “worried about the massive cost of lawsuits and the amount of litigation that’s going to come out of this,” said Mayson, whose group is campaigning against the measure along with other landlords and the state Realtors association.

Eviction risks

At the eight-unit McIlvaine Apartments in the city’s Hilltop neighborhood, tenants started getting together informally more than a year ago to talk about issues with their utilities. The landlord uses what’s known as a ratio utility billing system, in which the total utility costs of a building are divided based on a unit’s size and occupancy and other factors, rather than each apartment’s actual use.

Renters say that has meant high costs for their water, sewer and gas bills with little transparency.

“If there is a leak in the building or if the building manager comes in and leaves the sink on in a vacant unit, we’re the ones that pay for that,” said Daphne Jaesler, who has lived in the building for about a year. “All of these extra costs around owning the building get pushed on to us.”

Hoffmann said his water, sewer and garbage charges are usually around $180 a month.

The group, now organized as the McIlvaine Tenant Union, plans to begin their utility strike on Nov. 1, hoping to see movement from their landlord after raising their concerns for months. Ultimately, they want individual meters for each apartment or a flat monthly rate.

“Just showing up to the table doesn’t mean that we call off the strike,” said Rachel McDonald, who’s lived in the building for a year and a half. “It’s really about demonstration of bargaining in good faith.”

In a statement, the building’s owner, Rainier Valley Partners, said it respected tenants’ “right to express their views,” but that obligations to pay utility bills “remain governed by applicable law and the terms of each tenancy.”

The company said it looked into converting the building to individual utility metering but found the project would cost $328,000 and was “not economically feasible at this time.”

For the tenants, going on a utility strike to try to force some action comes with risks.

Like worker organizing, the goal of tenant unions is to leverage collective power. But unlike labor unions, tenant groups don’t have legal protections for actions like strikes, and landlords are not required to negotiate with them. Tenants could face eviction for failure to pay utilities or rent.

Sipping lime seltzer and coffee, McIlvaine tenants laid out the risks before taking the vote this month. They could receive notices to pay their utilities or vacate, the first step toward an eviction. But, they noted, evictions will soon be restricted under Tacoma’s winter eviction ban, which limits most evictions between Nov. 15 and March 15 except for limited reasons, including illegal activity. They viewed a utility shut-off to the entire building as unlikely.

Potential eviction is the biggest fear. Tenants said they plan to set aside the money for each month’s utility bills for eventual payment, and to reassess if anyone receives a pay-or-vacate notice or eviction filing. They plan to consider a rent strike if the landlord moves to evict anyone in the building.

“We won’t let anyone be picked off,” Hoffmann said.

‘Trying to survive’

The McIlvaine tenants are one of five groups in Tacoma, representing 10 apartment buildings, that have organized with the help of Tacoma Tenants, a nonprofit with the goal of building “supermajority strike-ready unions,” said lead organizer Devin Rydel Kelly.

Rent strikes are not the ultimate goal of organizing, but tenants need financial leverage over their landlords to make change, Rydel Kelly said.

“There’s really only two things that will usually get a landlord to negotiate, and one is financial pressure — the ability to go on a rent strike, and or really credibly threaten one,” he said. “And, less common but sometimes, social pressure.”

Renters have organized like this for generations, dating back to the 1930s when they fought evictions during the Great Depression.

“It comes in waves, basically, when tenants feel threatened,” said Dreier, the professor.

Not far from the McIlvaine Apartments, Sarah Gray and her neighbors at the Dreher Apartments joined with tenants in two other buildings owned by the same landlord. After hearing their buildings would be sold to new owners, the group feared the worst.

“We had reasonable questions about what’s going to happen with rent, leases, maintenance and, frankly, our ability to stay in our homes,” Gray said.

With many tenants in Gray’s building on month-to-month leases, their union hopes for longer-term agreements, timely repairs and no rent increases for the first year of new ownership.

“That’s giving us time to prepare for a reasonable rent raise,” Gray said. “The union wants an opportunity to have a conversation about that so that we know what to expect.”

In an email to The Seattle Times, real estate developer Daniel Casey, whose firm is buying Gray’s apartment building, declined to comment on tenants’ concerns, saying his company is unable to communicate with renters in the building until the sale closes.

“What I can say is that our intent is to keep current residents in place, and we take building conditions seriously,” he said.

Tacoma tenants’ organizing efforts come as the city changes around them.

“We see gentrification happening, and it’s hard to watch,” Gray said. “We don’t want to get pushed out.”

There is no comprehensive data on the number of tenant unions in the state, making it difficult to know how much organizing may be on the rise outside of Tacoma.

The Tenants Union of Washington State encourages renters to form associations or unions in their building when issues are affecting multiple tenants, said membership coordinator Talauna Reed. But the process can be difficult, and some renters are overwhelmed with high costs or safety concerns.

People of color, immigrants and renters for whom English isn’t a first language “are most impacted by predatory landlord practices,” Reed said. “They’re not going to be on the forefront of anything — not right now.”

“People are just trying to survive,” said Reed, who hopes the Tacoma measure could lead to similar efforts statewide.

And even for those who successfully organize, the outcome can be mixed.

When an apartment building in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood switched to ratio utility billing, tenants faced a “huge spike” in housing costs and soon formed an association, said renter Lexy Salas. They went on strike earlier this year, refusing to pay their utility bills and demanding a flat per-unit utility fee.

Salas and her neighbors agreed that if their landlord issued pay-or-vacate notices, a precursor to eviction, they would end the strike because an eviction record “can affect your housing for many, many years.” Indeed, six months after they launched the action, they received notices and paid.

In the end, the strike didn’t move their landlord to change the utility billing system, and Salas and others are now pushing for a citywide ban on ratio utility billing. “There is a need for legislative change,” she said.

At the same time, Salas and her neighbors continue to struggle like many tenants across the region. Facing an upcoming rent hike and utility bills that can be as high as $150 a month, Salas is now preparing to look for somewhere else to move.

“So many of us spend over a third or half of our incomes on housing, yet we don’t have a say in our own living conditions,” Salas said, “and that is just inherently unjust.”

At the McIlvaine in Tacoma, tenants hope for a better outcome, starting with substantive meetings with their landlord.

The most important thing the group can do going forward is to stay in regular communication with each other, Hoffmann told his neighbors after the vote. “That is our real strength here.”